#there will be no end to the genocide under trump so if we want the us to stop backing that then harris is still the best choice

[fairy-ganj-mother]

I fucking hate kamala btw like I voted for her but so begrudgingly just because trump is objectively worse. but I think we would still have almost the same amount of work to do as a society if she won, just hypothetically a democratic leadership would be easier to push over than the darling of the elites. we would still be fighting for gender-affirming care, to stop the genocide in Palestine, to stop fracking... etc. etc. kamala basically ran as a traditional republican which is why she fucking lost.

[potofsoup]

i love your fourth of july comics every year but this years feels extremely optimistic about biden’s abilities in the face of him letting roe get overturned and funding a gen*cide at worst or letting it happen at best by taking the bare minimum of regulatory action… i mean can he really be trusted at all anymore to do the right thing or act in line with the people’s demands? and how do we know the people behind project 2025 won’t just rig the election again to get in under false pretenses?

Hihi! Thank you for reading and enjoying my July 4th comics every year! I am in a non-US airport en route to a month-long trip in a place with sketchy internet, so sorry in advance for sloppiness in my response (and potentially going radio silent).

But:

I don't think he "let" Roe get overturned, since that was the Supreme Court's overwhelming conservative majority, which really started with Mitch McConnell refusing to approve Obama's appointee and forcing it into a 2016 election issue. The fact that Trump got to appoint 3 Supreme Court Justices is what got us here.

Re: Biden and the Israel/Hamas war ... on the one hand, there's definitely more that he could have done, but on the other hand, they are a whole other country over there. It's Hamas that initiated the Oct 7 attacks and took the hostages. It's Netanyahu and his right-wing government who decided to retaliate to such extreme extent. Biden can talk about how he would really like Netanyahu to stop fighting and step down, but at the end of the day that's not his call, any more than he can stop the Sudan fighting that is near-genocidal either.

So, to come to your question #1: "Can he really be trusted at all anymore to do the right thing or act in line with the people’s demands"?

For me, it's a resounding YES. Guyz, he has passed so much good domestic policies. My spouse works in green energy and the passing of the Inflation Reduction Act halved his anxiety and gave him legitimate hope. The tumblr post I linked to in my comic has links to many of the other great things that Biden has done. Tbh I voted for him in 2020 because "a moldy onion is still better than Trump", and I've been pleasantly surprised. Like how he tried to cancel student loans, the Supreme Court overturned it, and then he came back 6 months later with a different way to do it that didn't lead to a court challenge.

Is he perfect? Hell no. There's tons of stuff that I wish he did more about, or he went further on, but also he's just one guy heading one branch of government who is heading into an election year. (Just like FDR promising not joining WWII, while behind the scenes doing all the Lend-Lease Act stuff). And "the people" have lots of demands, many of them conflicting.

I'd also like to push at the unspoken part of your question... "Can he really be trusted to do the right thing..." compared to whom? Because right now the answer is "compared to Trump." And compared to Trump... I don't even trust Trump to respect the results of a legitimate election. Heck, he might just take his favorite state secrets, sell them to the highest bidder (or just show them off to someone for funzies), and then claim Presidential immunity. A decent Democrat who got stuff done vs someone who probably wants to pardon himself and all his friends and do Project 2025 stuff is not even on the same level. (Do I wish that there was a viable Democratic alternative to Biden? Sure! But who?) Heck, at this point -- imagine if it's Kamala Harris vs. Trump. Who would you vote for?

As for your question #2: "How do we know the people behind project 2025 won’t just rig the election again to get in under false pretenses?"

We don't. But also what can we do besides showing up to vote?

Actually, I need bullet points for this:

The 2022 midterm elections brought in fewer-than-expected election-deniers into crucial electoral offices at the state level, which means that hopefully most state electoral boards will continue to have integrity

Yes, voting is harder but at least we can still vote. So it's about getting out there and getting your vote counted. For some states, it involves waiting in 8 hour lines. For some states, it involves bringing 2 forms of ID. Document. Track. Make sure it's dropped off in a real ballot box and not a fake one. Don't believe messaging that the voting is happening on a different day or location, etc.

A 50.1% majority is easily challenged. A 55% majority, less so. Which means getting people out to vote.

The more people know about and think about the reality of a second Trump term (versus being disappointed by a Biden term), the more they will be motivated to vote against Trump.

Finally, let's be real here: I'm braced for a 2nd Trump term. That said:

I'm still going to go and vote for Biden, because the only way to prevent a 2nd Trump term is to vote.

A Trump term where either the House or Senate is controlled by the Democrats will be *very* different from a clean Republican sweep.

Even with a clean Republican sweep on the federal level, States have so much more power now, and voting the state level stuff will help shore up Democratic goals for the future. States get to draw voting districts however they want. States get to decide on abortion policies. If you live in a deep Red state, there still might be things to vote for that make it easier to live in now, and turn it purple a few elections down the line.

So at the end of the day, it's "Vote AND". Vote and keep living your best life. Vote and tell others about Project 2025. Vote and have hope. Even if Trump wins, at least you'll have voted against him. Vote and stay to build up a progressive wave for the next election.

[ceilidhtransing]

Having spent pretty much the entire year immersed in studying Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, and genocide more broadly, my heart is bursting with the need to stress how much you should take Project 2025 seriously. This is a long post but please stick with me.

Don't take this post as an attempt to concretely predict anything. We can't ever fully know the future and I think it's silly to say with total certainty “if Trump wins then America will become just like Nazi Germany” - not only because the future isn't written yet, but also because Germany under the Nazis was a very specific regime with its own quirks and peculiarities and I don't think that even a worst-case-scenario Trump regime would look exactly like Hitler's Germany. No two regimes ever look exactly alike: it would use the same colour palette as all far-right dictatorships but be constructed from a different medium, like what a watercolour is to an oil painting.

But just because Trump is a very different person from Hitler, and a worst-case-scenario Trump dictatorship would not literally be “Nazi Germany all over again”, that doesn't mean that what happened in Germany isn't instructive here. Forget the specifics of whether or not Trump as a dictator would organise a state identically to how the Nazis organised Germany or whatever; on a far broader and more relevant level, there is a distressing number of similarities. And too many people are falling into the same thought traps as they did then.

Please don't assume that Trump is “way too incompetent” to achieve what's in Project 2025 or Agenda 47. They said the same thing about Hitler. They said that there was no way this showman could govern effectively - holding big rallies and making speeches that get people riled up isn't the same as being good at running a functioning state and achieving what you want. The New York Times even wrote after he became Chancellor of Germany that this would only “let him expose to the German public his own futility”. And in many ways Hitler was pretty incompetent. But that didn't end up mattering. The greatest crime of the Nazi regime, the Holocaust, was masterminded mostly by a whole load of people besides Hitler, who were delegated the nitty-gritty task of actually orchestrating it. Hitler's personal incompetence didn't prevent war or genocide.

Please don't assume that Trump is “just a wacky nutcase” who “can't possibly be a real risk”. They said the same thing about Hitler. The mainstream media gave constant coverage to all the crazy extreme things Hitler said as if he was merely a bit of a joke and not a massive threat. The Nazis were quite happy with this. To quote Goebbels repeatedly in his diary, “The main thing is they're talking about us.”

Please don't assume that being in power will “moderate” Trump and that “of course he won't be able to do all the crazy stuff once he actually has to govern”. They said the same thing about Hitler. It was a common sentiment in the early 1930s that all the sensible politicians around him would force him to moderate his stances. Fritz von Papen, the last Chancellor of Weimar Germany, persuaded President Hindenburg to make Hitler the Chancellor by assuring him, “In a few months, we will have pushed [Hitler] so far into the corner that he will squeak.” It turns out that power doesn't “moderate” people who are openly talking about a dictatorship.

Please don't assume that there's any truth to the whole “Trump has nothing to do with Project 2025 and trying to link it to him is just liberal hysteria” line. They said the same thing about Hitler. People repeatedly asserted that Nazi street violence wasn't really representative of the party leadership; it wasn't representative of Hitler. He was even subpoenaed by a very brave lawyer in 1931 in a bid to prove that recent violence by Nazi stormtroopers was committed with the knowledge and encouragement of the party leadership, with part of the prosecution's argument hanging on a pamphlet by Goebbels that promised a violent overthrow of the state if the Nazis couldn't come to power legitimately. Surely no legal political party could be publishing that. In a successful attempt to escape criminal charges, Hitler repeatedly lied that the pamphlet was not official Nazi Party material and that he didn't know anything about it. No Trump didn't write it, no it isn't an official GOP manifesto, but the links between Project 2025 and Trump, the previous Trump administration, and Trump allies are extremely well documented. Just the other day, Project 2025 co-author Russell Vought was caught calling Trump's disavowals of the document “graduate-level politics” and saying, “what he's doing is just very, very conscious distancing himself from a brand ... he's in fact not even opposing himself to a particular policy.”

Please don't assume that “there's no way something like that could happen here; we're way too educated and advanced”. They said the same thing about Hitler. The Germany of the 1920s and 1930s was one of the most educated and most scientifically and industrially advanced nations in the world, and its cities were some of the most progressive in the world. People were stunned and horrified that it was in Germany of all places - Germany, land of music and art and science and literature! - that fascism took root. Germany's economic and social advancement didn't stop about 40% of its voters choosing the Nazis. It didn't stop them taking power.

Please don't assume that Project 2025 is “just a wishlist” and “not actually a serious plan”. They said the same thing about Hitler. As is hopefully very clear by now, plenty of people did not think that the Nazis were capable of, or would dare to try, putting into actual practice the horrific ideas about race that undergirded so much of their ideology. “I like Hitler; he talks sense economically and I think all this stuff about Jews is just bluff and bluster.” “Every party has a loony wing, right? You have to understand they're not serious when they talk about this stuff; they're just telling their base what they want to hear.” “God have you heard this crazy race science shit about head shapes and stuff? It's hilarious! I'm sure none of them at the top really believe that; there's no way they'd be that nuts.” When a group of people like this tells you what they believe and tells you what they want to do with power, believe them. No matter how ridiculous they seem, they're not joking.

In the words of Hans Litten, the lawyer who subpoenaed and cross-examined Hitler in that court case in 1931, “Don't listen to him; he's telling the truth.” Litten was arrested on the night of the Reichstag fire in 1933 and spent the rest of his life being tortured in concentration camps before dying in Dachau in 1938 at the age of 34.

A tyrannical dictatorship can often be seen coming a mile away. I don't want to imply for a second that what the Nazis did came as a surprise to everyone and couldn't possibly have been predicted. There were people who saw this coming in the 1920s and 1930s and tried to sound the alarm while they still had a chance. But they were too often in the minority, taking the threat seriously while others had convinced themselves that there was no need for concern because the Nazis wouldn't really do all the things they repeatedly talked about wanting to do. Everyone should have seen this coming, but too many people wanted to believe it couldn't be true.

Don't let this scare you. Let it energise you. Talk to the people in your life about Project 2025 and Agenda 47. Push back against people who assert that “they'd never actually do all that stuff” or “Trump didn't even write Project 2025” or “it's not a real plan, just a list of crazy shit to get the base riled up”. Have conversations with folks you know who are on the fence about voting or about who to vote for and who seem persuadable. Make sure you're registered to vote, and keep making sure, especially if you live in a red state where people keep mysteriously dropping off voter rolls.

Now, again, please don't read this as some confident prediction that Trump will be a Hitler figure. I want to stress that is a worst-case scenario. If a Trump presidency is what happens, I would much prefer the best-case scenario: that he spends four years fumbling around and not really accomplishing anything and then gives up power at the end without much of a fight. But it would also be a folly to be smugly overconfident that the worst-case scenario “won't” or “can't” happen. It could. It has happened before. There is no reason it couldn't happen again.

[prozach27]

The idea that voting for Harris and Walz means you don’t care about Gaza is such an uneducated position that it can just about only be justified as a psy-op. What exactly is it that you think voting is for? If it’s to show where your idealistic morality lies - what you would really LOVE for America to look like with a president - then of course it makes sense to not want to vote someone who isn’t as critical as you’d like of the Palestinian Genocide. But that’s not the world we live in. As American citizens, we are IMMENSELY privileged, and we cannot possibly understand the horrors and tribulations Palestinians have endured over the last year. The idea that Trump and Harris are “equally bad” for Palestine is a position of immense privilege that doesn’t value Gazan lives. Trump has told Israel to finish the war. Harris is calling for a temporary ceasefire. From a purely logical perspective, one party is promoting a position that could save Palestinian lives while the other is asking for an escalation of events. If you can’t see the difference between these two positions - the real-world, life-altering difference between these two positions for people in a war-zone - then it’s time to ask yourself if you’re morally grandstanding by demanding nothing less than a complete end to the war, or if you’re more concerned in saving even one additional life.

There is no 3rd-party presidential candidate with enough name recognition to make it in this election. If you want a third party, by all means, support them after the election and help them get a foothold. That doesn’t change that they’re not a viable option for 2024. So, do you choose Trump - who wants to escalate the war - or Harris, who wants to help it calm down? These positions are fundamentally different and will lead to changes in the number of Palestinians who survive. Leaving the Palestinian genocide aside, Trump and project 2025 have made it clear how they want to limit abortion access, higher education, transgender rights, gay rights, and DEI efforts while the Harris White House wouldn’t be trying to actively dismantle these things. These are, once again, clear cut issues that will alter how many people survive under each presidency.

If your position is that “unless they give exactly what I want, they don’t deserve to be in office,” then it’s clear you’re not willing or interested in making the actually hard choices in politics and your activism is performative. You aren’t voting for who’s a good person or who you like most - you’re voting for the enemy you want in office. Do the right thing. Vote for Harris and give people a chance to save more lives.

[drdemonprince]

A few weeks ago you replied to a vote scold anon asking about project 2025 by saying it was like liberal qanon. I haven't stopped thinking about it since. Would you be willing to say more about that?

Dems want a motivating conspiracy theory to shock voters into getting to the polls and supporting them. but it's a manufactured one. we are essentially living in a media landscape that is not ruled by journalism, or even by social media, but by the creation of centralizing cults (fandoms, conspiracy theory groups, etc) and the Dems are attempting to harness that kind of obsessive power for their own ends by telling a fantastical handmaid's tale kind of story of what the future will be under Trump. As if that reality isn't already happening. They need to create a shadowy boogeyman to be able to draw a favorable comparison to themselves, because they have so little to deliver to anyone who is trans, a woman, an immigrant, cares about fucking genocide, poor, Black, etc.

As others on the post wisely noted, the Heritage Foundation has been drawing up plans exactly like project 2025 for years, the Republicans have n e v e r been coy about what their plans are, they're already been wildly successful at it, and half of the things that conservatives would be pushing for if they were in office are happening already under Biden.

Like Qanon, project 2025 as a theory latches onto a few very real anxieties that the American public has and true abuses that people in power do actually commit, but then waves a false narrative around them that serves one wing of the existing power structure's interests and is designed to lather the base up into a paranoid fury.

[fairuzfan]

I never claimed Biden's policies never hurt anyone, but it is unfair to blame Biden for Covid when Covid began under the Trump administration and it was Trump's actions that led to its severity and damage. Biden at least attempted to mitigate Covid during the first year of his administration, but by then the damage was already extensive and the politicized culture around it made it impossible for Americans to cooperate and regulations to have any real affect. But blaming Biden for Covid is like blaming Hoover for the Great Depression.

Don't get me wrong, I hate Biden too. But no matter how awful our 2024 presidential choices are, they are our only possible choices for president. Our voting systems are messed up. 3rd party votes only work against us and lots of people also just opt out of voting, which is about as equally affective. The electoral college was founded on literal racism and slavery and is still imposed to this day. But that's the system we have to work with. It's rigged. It's awful. I KNOW.

And like I said voting is not the end all of political action, and reading some of these comments, I can understand your anger. For most elections, yes, a vote IS an endorsement and support for a politician. But presidential elections just don't work that same way. When you vote 3rd party, you might as well just handed over your right to vote to your representative. And I guarantee you your representative is either going to vote for Trump or Biden.

The presidential election is NOT the only election on the ballot. And all other elections in the US make it possible for 3rd party candidates to win. I will vote 3rd party wherever possible locally, and I encourage you to do so too.

Still, reading through all these comments, I have yet to hear an actual solution to this problem that is achievable by November. Our choices are Biden or Trump. That's it. I hate it too, but if you have any better, feasible ideas, please let me hear it.

Except it is an endorsement. Biden literally thinks "they'll get over it" (it being the genocide of palestinians) by the time election comes. He thinks that we will vote for him anyways so he'll do whatever he wants. That's literally an endorsement. The reason the Vote Uncommitted campaign is gaining traction is to threaten Biden into doing something. If he doesn't feel threatened, then he assumes we are going to vote for him no matter what. So that means it's an endorsement.

If Biden doesn't listen to us, that's on him for losing the election. Not on the people who want him to do something else. And I don't want trump to win. I don't. But I will never vote for a person who so brazenly killed my friends and family, lied to my face, and was so unbelievably arrogant in that he thinks he can do whatever the fuck he wants. Feel free to vote for Biden. Just don't say it's for anyone else.

[traegorn]

"Actual leftism involves making pragmatic moves" you say?

"Even where there is no prospect of achieving their election the workers must put up their own candidates to preserve their independence, to gauge their own strength and to bring their revolutionary position and party standpoint to public attention. They must not be led astray by the empty phrases of the democrats, who will maintain that the workers’ candidates will split the democratic party and offer the forces of reaction the chance of victory."

-Marx, 1850.

Perhaps gain more than a vibes-based understanding of leftism before speaking on it. PA voter here, voting 3rd party.

Ah, we gotta theory bro here who thinks leftism starts and ends with Marx. Believe it or not, we've learned a few things in the last hundred and seventy five years. When we talk about making pragmatic decisions, we know that incrementalism is the only way progress has been made.

Here's the thing, you can't boycott an election. It's a two party system. EIther Harris or Trump is going to win, and Daddy Revolution ain't coming.

Time to put the book down and take some actions that will make an actual difference, and if Trump gets a second term, we don't be able to do that.

Your vote for a third party will only help put Trump in power, which will set us back another twenty years. There will be two seats up on the supreme court, which would cement the conservative majority. Trump has stated he want to use the US Military to round up his political opposition, and is using Nazi rhetoric about immigrant populations. Trans rights are under attack, and the only thing that's stopped it at the national level is the Republicans not holding the white house. Trump wants to pull aid from Ukraine, which would allow Russia to continue their genocide there.

In 2016 we were fighting for a higher minimum wage, and now we're fighting for basic rights that were destroyed by those four years of Trump.

And, like, the people in Gaza want us to elect Harris, as do other members of that community.

So if you really do claim to care about the things you say you do, you'll do the right thing and vote for Harris.

Because if you have the values you claim you do, I can't think of any reason other than selfish ego why you wouldn't.

[maxknightley]

i just don't understand how usa trans folks in my circles aren't afraid for their lives re: the election. i get it. biden has been shit, he's been the main contributor to a genocide. harris will likely be no different. i'm in no way thrilled with them or our establishment as a whole. but trump clearly spells a much, much worse reality for trans people in this country. not only does his supporters' platform outline the criminalization of transness, but they'll have full immunity to do it due to the supreme court decision. this isn't a worst case scenario to get people to vote blue, this is the reality of what trump actively wants to do. am i missing something? because i'd love to believe i'm the crazy one in this case

most of what you're describing has been happening on a state-by-state level. the biden administration has done next to nothing to meaningfully push back against it. even if you're going hard in the paint on voting, you would be better off focusing your efforts on state and municipal elections, where something good could at least conceivably happen

"supreme court justice" is a lifetime position. as such, the supreme court is still going to have a republican majority regardless of who gets elected come november. you could make the argument "oh but what if one of the justices dies within the next four years," except that the democratic establishment has repeatedly demonstrated that they have zero interest in actually securing a progressive majority in the judiciary, so I'm not especially convinced it would make a difference. mind you, the whole fucking institution is flagrantly antidemocratic regardless.

kamala harris is actively campaigning on Bipartisanship and Cooperation with the christofascists she's running against. oh sorry I mean the Moderate Anti-Trump Republicans, like dick cheney, who definitely wasn't part of multiple infamously reactionary presidential administrations within living memory. why should I believe for an instant that she'll fight for me?

I might be biased due to living in a blue state, but the fact of the matter is: after four years of Trump, my life was not materially worse. after four years of Biden, my life was not materially better. under such circumstances, how am I supposed to feel anything but nihilism and apathy about the presidential election?

This is definitely a factor of living in a blue state, but it would be a statistical miracle if my vote for president mattered even the slightest bit beyond "maybe the green party will get some government funding and that will have some kind of positive ripple effect"

as someone who remembers the Bush administration I speak from experience when I say the republicans are constantly proposing hideous, inane social policies that end up dying in committee. that's not to say we should let down our guard, only that "if trump is re-elected he will immediately institute a dictatorship and all trans people will be hanged on the spot" is not actually a sure thing by any means.

I am a petty, angry person, and when people try to browbeat me into doing something - especially something that strikes me as pointless - it makes me less likely to do it.

tl;dr it's going to be bad either way; meanwhile, voting for a cheerleader of genocide would disgust me enough on a personal level that I'm willing to get uncharacteristically Kantian about the whole affair.

call me when they return to the obama playbook of "at least pretending they will try to make things better"

[grison-in-space]

I'm honestly very confused why people on Tumblr seem to think that abstaining from voting and allowing Trump to win is better for some instead of worse for everyone except billionaires. Like ok, the dude literally says that he's going to accelerate the ongoing genocide, repeal LGBTQ+ rights, and basically set the US under a dictatorship among other atrocities. How is voting for the average democrat not harm reduction in comparison. I'm just scrolling through the comments and replies on that post trying to wrap my head around it. People are acting like a revolution is the only way of achieving harm reduction and its like no, a revolution is the goal and in the meantime we still have to deal with the current presidential campaign because we literally have a month and unless you can overthrow the government in that time frame, Trump will win if users don't vote. I don't even think that they're bots or astroturfing or anything because I recognize a lot of usernames, I'm just trying to understand their perspective. A larger chance of less genocide over the course of four years is not better than no genocide, no, but it's better than a guarantee of more genocide. Especially when the other option is a tiny, minuscule chance of no genocide in the future (and given that we can still vote, Trump will make sure that Palestinians no longer exist at the end of his term).

I'm honestly just fucking done with seeking understanding right now. It's very funny, because the whining about shaming over not voting is actually making me a lot more inclined to lose respect for people who deliberately choose not to vote than just letting it go would be.

I get that the focus on voting leading up to (particularly presidential) elections can be obnoxious. I also get that it can be discouraging when your slate of realistic political candidates is...limited, to say the least, and when you are playing with one hell of a stacked deck. I spent eight years in Texas, okay? And I am also mildly irritated and impatient about the level of "heeeeeey, have you made a plan to vote yet?" stuff going around, because of fucking course I have, can we think about anything else for a second?

And yet.

Voting is a hassle and it's annoying and sometimes I have a hard time finding candidates I respect. And it's my fucking civic duty to show up and pick the best person available for the job anyway. Sometimes I cuss as I try to find the polling place. Sometimes I make a plan and sometimes I go "oh shit oh shit" and I scramble. I am a human person. I also think it is very important to focus on other things, too, which is why I do those when I am not focusing on voting.

But get out the vote efforts have to be pervasive and loud and hard to ignore. They're trying to reach the most flaky, mercurial, forgetful ADHD motherfuckers on the ground and get those folks to the polls on time. They're trying to reach people whose lives are exploding around them and get them to the polls, where their vote might let someone who actually wants to help do something about it. They're trying to change the system that exists in front of us using the most tractable levers currently existing on the ground.

So frankly? When the GOTV shit annoys me and I can't deal with it for a second? I remind myself it's not about me, and I go curl up with a book. If it's not about me, it's not about me. I always make a voting plan, I find my station and I usually go early on a time when I have some space to wait, and I thank my poll workers and smile at them and then I feel good about myself for twenty minutes before I go about the rest of my day. So I can say that to the GOTV people and they go away and find someone else to hassle. It's fine! It's fine. The world doesn't have to be about me.

I feel like that is not that goddamn hard to do, but you'd never know it from the way some people complain.

[marzipanandminutiae]

Hello I was just wondering if you've seen Imani Barbarin talk about not voting (https://x.com/imani_barbarin/status/1747723080917492020?s=46&t=55h0eHrgY7FtQI8ej54maw)? I saw you reblog the post about "not waiting for the morally pure candidate" and I think that's a willful misrepresentation of what Gen Z is feeling

We've not seen Biden address ANY of the things the post claims (climate change is the only one I remember without scrolling back) but we have seen him approve more oil licenses than trump, drop more bombs than trump, support a genocide, abandon disabled people and any Covid mitigations during the second highest surge since the start of the pandemic (with less testing so odds are things r even worse than we can tell), bring back student debt, etc etc

As a Gen Z'r, I genuinely want to understand how y'all can believe "no vote is a vote for fascism" when both candidates are horrendous? Why is the onus on us and not the politicians to do better instead of pointing fingers and saying "at least we're better than Trump" when that is categorically untrue?

I'm sorry if this is too rant-y I'm just so furious and frustrated with my perception of older voters' complacency with being given utter shit instead of organizing for better

I am trying very hard to be reasoned and understanding about this- bearing in mind that we want the same things in the end and I'mnot jazzed for Biden either -when it's extremely, EXTREMELY obvious to me that Trump is worse.

Like.

If he gets elected there might not be another election. The man was theoretically willing to use military force to quell protests if he lost the 2020 election (why he didn't, I don't know; but I'm not willing to give him that chance a second time).

Trump has called himself a dictator, proudly, in the same breath as saying "we're closing the border and we're drilling, drilling, drilling." Biden does NOT remotely have a perfect record on either of those things- he was locked into some construction of the border wall by how the funds had already been allocated by Congress during the Trump administration, but not everything he's done in relation to it, which also pisses me off. As for the oil thing, it's a bit more complicated than it seems on the surface: not as simple as "he doesn't actually care about the environment" even as it's definitely not a good move or in line with his stated climate goals.

As for those climate goals, I found this interesting article that rates key areas of climate action and how they've fared during the Biden administration. It was updated in January, and it is not sycophantically uncritical across the board. But that is LEAGUES more progress than we'd get under a system of "drilling, drilling, drilling" with absolutely no concessions to the climate crisis at all.

His handling of the situation in Palestine...yeah, I struggle with that, too. I know he's been trying to talk their leaders down, to some degree, but it's not nearly enough to me. And I STRONGLY disagree with us selling them weapons. However, Trump's statements on the matter- calling for a ban on Gazan refugees in the US, calling pro-Palestinian protestors "barbarians," and saying he'd revoke the student visa of anyone he deemed "anti-American" -makes me believe that letting him get into power is not something my conscience would allow, vis a vis the fate of the Palestinian people. Because it would be exponentially worse.

I also think the material good that has happened under the Biden administration has been...MASSIVELY under-publicized. Because like. He HAS addressed things. Lots of things, in fact.

this article from last year was too early to include pardoning thousands of people federally convicted of simple marijuana possession (again, not perfect, but still very good), setting new rules to limit methane emissions, capping prices for at least some major insulin producers, partial student loan debt forgiveness (tried to do more, but got hamstrung by Republicans), cancelling oil leases granted by Trump in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (not enough given the leases HE granted, but it's not nothing either), and much more I'm sure I'm overlooking. Because, again, nobody's been talking about it. It sells more news subscriptions to feed readers an endless stream of what Biden is doing wrong- which I am not denying! -leaving people with the dangerous impression that both sides are the same. Republicans would not have done any of this. That's just the truth of the matter.

Look, I would like a better option, too. I would love to actually LIKE a presidential candidate in my lifetime. I'd love one who wouldn't make concessions to the interests of selfish, heartless people with ledgers where their sense of human compassion should be. I just don't see that person coming to power between now and November.

And I'll take someone who is Standard US Politician Slimy but at least makes some improvements (unfortunately, I doubt there's anyone with a chance of winning in less than a year who doesn't support Israel to some degree, since this country have a long history of that) over someone who might actually stage a right-wing military coup, and who would kill me and other marginalized people himself if he thought it would get him more fame and fortune.

Some people say their conscience won't let them vote Biden. I can't tell them what to do. But if he gets the Democratic nomination, my conscience wouldn't let me do anything else.

[hjartasalt]

@ prev "red or blue hitlerite anon" (you're sooooo smart for comparing people to hitler by the way, spoken like a true conservative who feels very attacked and doesn't know shit about history or politics) - I don't think people actually understand this but any attempt to overthrow our current govt, even if led by leftists - who can't even currently organize enough to vote, apparently, so good luck pulling that together to begin with - WILL be immediately overrun by fascists with many, many guns, because they're the ones who actually show up Especially in places they're not wanted. A lot of them are also very anti-government already and would be more than willing to take the lead, which would be relatively easy because again, they have Many, Many guns. We see this every time a peaceful protest movement gets big enough. We saw a glimpse of it with the insurrection. It would be worse in the case of an actual coup. There is simply no current reality in the US and especially within the next 3 months where a revolution situation isn't deadly for the people already most harmed by both parties and the people most vulnerable when it comes to accessing/relying on access to basic resources. It is a deeply childish and idealistic thing to want at this point - the only reasonable, safe option atm is to vote in a government who we can push toward positive change, which will objectively only be possible if Dems stay in office.

And no, we don't fucking like them as people, but as politicians/a party, they're bully-able, and they aren't about to set the national fucking guard on people who peacefully challenge them, unlike the alternative (again, we saw this in 2020, we know exactly how Trump feels about peaceful protestors he doesn't like). And sorry, but if you actually pay attention to US politics beyond tumblr, Biden-Harris *have* made positive changes! People acknowledging this does not somehow make them psyop-brain-poisoned or a cop bootlicker, lmao! Reality is nuanced! Because yes, alongside any praise Biden may deserve, the Palestinian genocide is utterly inexcusable and good fucking riddance to him for complete loss of voter support to that end. We absolutely need to keep hounding him and the rest of the party on that front. But it's also unfortunately idealistic and fantastical to think we'll get a fully pro-Palestinian candidate on any side within this election cycle, or even the next one. Zionism is too entrenched in US foreign policy. Changing that will require more years of grassroots pushing and organization - which again will likely not even be possible under Trump. If you truly hate the US Empire (which you should) you Need to consider who is more likely to strengthen it and who it is possible to bully or radicalize toward change. There are people in the Democratic party who are already pro-Palestine, and who want to see other radical changes become general policy. Change IS very much possible and should be actively worked toward, but it sure as fuck will not happen not under Trump or any conservative who follows him.

But, yknow, if y'all are truly that desperate for a revolution and think it will work - Please take the initiative and try to actually start one here, instead of sitting with a thumb up your ass screaming at everyone who's actually trying to get something else achievable done in the short-term. If you're that desperate for things to change that extremely, then go do the fucking change you want to see done. The revolution is not the rapture. You have to actually go do it if you want it that bad. And I wish you the best of luck. 🤷‍♀️

.

[modern-politics111]

Jill Stein & her voters are self-aggrandizing

These fools are going to help Trump more than they are going to help Palestine. Looking at polls in Michigan, the state is essentially in a tie and Stein and Co. are actively trying to take votes from Kamala because of the genocide in Gaza/Palestine. There's even videos of Stein's surrogates bragging about this goal (another video). Even Republicans are supporting Stein's push because they know that it will help them in the General. 

Stein has a no chance of winning and she is playing her voters as fool for saying that she does. Why believe her? She has never won a race - no matter how many times that she has tried at any level. But sure she'll win the presidency. She polls - at best - around two percent. That two percent would be enough to push Trump over the top in Michigan and Nationally.

They blame Kamala for Israel's actions in Gaza even though, as VP, she has little to no control over the military. They think that if they vote for Stein/against Kamala that the Dem party will start listening..? (How did that work out in 2016?) That is if we have any more elections following a Trump victory.

Have they heard that Trump wants to deport protestors? All these college protests will no longer be allowed if Trump has his way. We heard how Trump/Vance talk about the Haitian immigrants in Ohio and their disregard for their legal status and will move to deport them anyhow. I have sympathy for these Muslim and Arab voters that want justice for Palestine but under a Trump presidency, what's stopping him from deporting or jailing these voters? This is after all the man that implemented the Muslim ban but this time, he'll have the Supreme Court in his pocket.

Do they not realize that with Trump, Israel will be more embolden and Trump may even push them to be even more aggressive and spread the war across the region. 

Stein's petty strategy of going after Kamala voters will not push the Green Party's goals further. If Kamala wins, Kamala might consider them politically hostile. If she loses, all the Green Party policy goals would be destroyed, our democracy would could end, and Stein's voters could be arrested and/or deported. 

If Stein had any political sense she would endorse Kamala on the condition that Kamala calls for an arms embargo however that doesn't help the grift. 

I could go on but this whole thing just makes me so frustrated. You should watch Mehdi Hasan's interview with Jill Stein and her VP. He does a better job than I ever could.

[thequeenofsastiel]

Frankly, I'm not remotely surprised that she lost. I didn't think for a second that she would win. I didn't want to say anything on here because I didn't want to put bad vibes out just in case it would do anything to make her lose. But now that she's lost, I want to put in my two cents as to why.

There are several factors. First, I think being a WOC and the daughter of immigrants was an issue due to misogyny, racism, and xenophobia. The second was that for all that people said she won the debate, she didn't give any kind of good answer when asked how she'd improve the economy and combat inflation. I think people underestimated how important that was, because I think the main thing Americans are concerned about is the economy and inflation. People were able to buy more groceries under Trump, and the importance of that cannot be overstated. She also should have distanced herself from Biden, given how unpopular he is.

But I think the main thing was the genocide in Gaza.

Too often, Democrats have made the mistake of courting moderates and Republicans and ignoring progressives. I get the mentality behind this. They assume that there's no chance in hell most of us will vote for Republicans, so they think they don't need to inspire us at all. But they don't consider the fact that by giving us nothing to believe in, we won't want to give our vote at all.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think that the reaction to this foolish move should be to just sit back and let Republicans run the country into the ground. I believe in harm reduction, and I will always vote for the most progressive party that I think has the chance of winning. But I can understand why progressives who are more short-sighted than me would stay home. I think the lack of attention to progressives is why Hillary lost in 2016. Biden, on the other hand, worked with Bernie Sanders and actually courted progressives. Along with that, people were horrified by the pandemic. But people have short memories, and the images of mass graves and giant refrigerated trucks housing corpses has faded enough to not matter as much as they should. And the only thing Kamala did to court progressives was to pick Tim Walz as her running mate. She even said that she'd appoint a Republican to her cabinet.

So Gaza. Progressives are the ones who are the most horrified by the genocide occurring. We aren't called "bleeding hearts" for nothing. All Kamala needed to do was express support for Palestine. Call it the genocide that it is, and say that she'll stop selling weapons to Israel if they don't stop targeting civilians. But she didn't do that. She made it clear that she wasn't willing to protect people from genocide if it was politically inconvenient.

So progressives rebelled. We shouldn't have. We should have been cognizant of the fact that Trump will make it so much worse. At least with Kamala there was a small chance that it might get better. Now I don't see a future in which Gaza isn't completely leveled and annexed, along with the West Bank. But many progressives couldn't bring themselves to cast a vote for someone who made it clear that she would sit back and let a genocide happen. I don't agree with that choice. I think it was privileged and short-sighted. But I can understand it. Kamala sacrificed the progressive vote. And I think that at the end of the day, that's why she lost. Kamala fucked up. Progressives fucked up. And now the world will suffer.

[ileftherbackhome]

okay to take my anger out of it a little bit, "not voting" will not actually teach the democrats a lesson because they already know that lesson.

if you look up the statistics of how many active dem voters are leftists, it's like under 10% of the vote. for decades now, the dems have not had the leftist vote. it's partially why the dem party is so moderate these days. for a while, their strategy worked and they were able to get the votes with the moderate crowd but it no longer works which is why the dem party has been leaning the most left it ever has.

biden was the most progressive candidate in decades.

we as the youth showed up to vote.

they gave us harris who is even more progressive than biden is (i will not go on about taking kamala's race into account when discussing her campaign runs but i fucking digress).

and harris gave us walz, the most leftist candidate ever.

we as the youth CANNOT FUCKING FUCK THIS UP.

if we do not vote, the dems will take it as the leftist vote is a lost cause forever.

they are leaning the most left they ever have because they want our votes.

we have to show up and vote because THEY ARE LISTENING to us for the first time in a while. we NEED to keep this going.

remember this: elections were never the end goal. they are the starting point. who would you rather organize under, harris or trump? that is the question to ask yourself in the booth.

who can i vote for that will listen to me when i protest? harris has shown she will do that. listen to her. trust her as a black woman to help us. vote for her.

then continue to protest and call your representatives for more than just the genocide. vote in your local elections. they happen every year, multiple times a year.

show up. organize.

but you need to vote.

[tanadrin]

How do you feel about the Gaza war all but ensuring Trump's reelection by destroying Biden politically?

It might; it's certainly hurt his standing with a number of different groups like Arab-Americans. Whether it will translate into a broader erosion of support I can't tell, and there are so many things that are up in the air still about this election (which is over a year away!) that it's kind of a fool's game to try to predict the outcome now.

I'm not sure that Biden's support for the Israeli bombing campaign/ground invasion is "destroying" him politically at all. That would imply he's paying a real cost among the majority of his supporters, but the Democratic party is quite right-wing on the Israel-Palestine issue at the moment. I think Biden is pursuing the policies that he thinks have broad support among his political faction, and unfortunately I think he may be correct in that assessment.

It goes without saying that if Trump or a similar politician was president now, or was president during a similar crisis in the future, he'd probably be even more enthusiastic about endorsing whatever the Israeli government wanted to do. That troubles me, of course. It would be nice if there were options for the American president other than "endorsing mass murder with a sigh of regret" and "endorsing mass murder with cheering and clapping of hands."

I have a lot of worries. I worry that for all the outrage, nothing will fundamentally change--that Israeli politics will (with Netanyahu in charge or someone else) continue to drift to the right, that Oslo will be the high-water mark for hope for a peaceful resolution in my lifetime. More parochially, I worry about the German government cynically exploiting this situation to justify a stronger anti-immigration and anti-refugee policy, hoping to outflank the AfD on this issue; and I worry that Biden will lose in 2024 and the lesson the Democratic party will take from it isn't "we need to be less like a bunch of cynical neoliberal death cultists" and instead "it was clearly our labor policy that was the problem, let's lurch rightward again." I worry that the lessons we took from World War II have faded already, or were always too narrow in scope--that we are sensitive to fascism only if it marches under literal swastikas, that we care about refugees and genocide only if they can be mythologized as the perfect victim, going meekly to their fate (preferably years after the fact, when it is too late to actually do anything about it).

I think there are a lot of good people in the world doing good things, who want to fight for what's right. But this is a really bleak situation, and none of them are in charge. We could use a leader with real courage who can vigorously articulate an expansive moral vision, something beyond massacre-for-massacre retribution with no end in sight.

[a-realclassact]

"What happens when a genocide falls out of the news cycle?

For those of us in the West? …Relief. Don’t shy away from these thoughts. It’s my job, as an artist, to force us to be honest. We silently feel relieved. We feel exhausted by the weight of having to care about people we ultimately feel we can do nothing for. True radicalization, the kind of change of thought that translates into changed action, only happens for a precious few. The vast majority of onlookers never really wanted to move from their position as spectator; they just fervently wished for a happier ending. So when there is less to look at (because the news cycle needs fresh blood; because the people providing live, on the ground coverage have been killed; when there’s less to look at because we have seen so many clips and photographs and accounts of visceral deaths that looking only makes us numb anyhow), we turn our eyes to the easiest narrative of hope that our screens can provide. We accept a manufactured happy ending.

And now, I am watching a happy ending be manufactured. Because the empire has allowed us our small, Western tantrums at the genocides necessary to keep the machines of imperialism going. It is now time to move on and be placated with a victory story— something we feel we have a sense of control over! Never mind the fact that we don’t live in a direct democracy! Vote! Vote out the fascism! The bombs will still drop and the children will still starve to death (if they survive the Israeli snipers aiming for their heads) and the famines will still be manufactured and the raw resources stripped from the colonies but we did it! We managed to keep ourselves comfortable.

This is the part where everyone boos me. There’s usually one section in essays like these that get under people’s skin, so just to set the tone: I’m not saying this because I want to make you angry, I am saying it because I think it’s a useful truth to consider.

We, the “reasosnable” US masses, only dislike Trump because he embarrasses us.

He has a flagrant disregard of the rules of presidential diplomacy that disgraces our reputation. Policy-wise, his era was really not distinct from the current Biden administration or presidents beforehand. He’s someone who says the quiet parts of running an imperialist ethno-state out loud, which emboldens the radicalized right, and it’s overtly racist, and those people were already organizing for a hostile takeover! We need someone to blame for the radical left’s lack of concrete, sustained mobility and so we love to hate him. We hate him because he embarrasses us, not because he’s worse! Harris is only the better choice because she’s prettier, and more relatable, and has the right sort of gravitas. She doesn’t embarrass us. We are willing to trade liberation for spectacle, but it must be a spectacle that makes us feel good at the end of the day.

Do you know how I know?

We should be outraged that the Vice President of an administration aiding an abetting the most documented genocide in human history can peacefully run for office. That is a sham. That is embarrassing. Especially when that person has stated they do not plan on enforcing any sort of concession from the murderous Israeli regime. There has been absolutely no mention of the other human rights crises and violations happening elsewhere amongst the colonized world— the ongoing conflicts in across Black and Indigenous nations that we tend to tack onto Free Palestine to show we absolutely do care about Black people outside of Western imperial cores. haha. We have made no demands because we, the masses, have no demands outside of feeling like everything will be okay again. We don’t actually care about these people as people. We care about them as symbols of liberation and as litmus tests to prove we, in the hard times, would “do the right thing.” If we cared about them as people, submitting to someone still pleased to orchestrate their deaths, which VP Harris is doing right now, would be unthinkable. We would be using this time of mass disillusionment to destabilize the empire’s business as usual. We want spectacle more than we want actual liberation for ourselves or for the people that we say we are in solidarity with. It doesn’t make any sense.

The only thing guaranteed to be worse under Trump is the spectacle. And we care more about spectacle more than we care about tangible, material change. Another Trump presidency is not a happy ending that will allow us to take our minds of the incessant dying of the third world. And we want something to distract us. We want something comfortable. We want something that we can look to and say, “We did it!! And we already went to all these marches. We're so tired.”

We are supposed to, we are primed to want to accept whatever happy ending the empire orchestrates, because most of us believe in the ability to be comfortable as a divine right. If we're powerless except for the vote, and we usher in somebody that does the spectacle better, that brings us back to a state of psychological comfort: even if we know that everything's not all right, we can feel like everything's all right. IImagining ourselves as powerless is uncomfortable in a way that a new, smiling, voted-in happy ending can solve. Imagining ourselves as powerful enough to stop the machine is excruciating— that means we would have to forgo comfort altogether. And consistent comfort is the only thing that we have. It's consistent running water and no power outages and subsidized corn and subsidized fuel, okay?

I think a lot of us have given up the desire to imagine ourselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Soaring homelessness, economic depravity, the rising cost of food essentials makes it difficult to delude ourselves we’re this close to being rich. It’s become commonplace in pop culture to disparage the ultra-wealthy; most of us don’t imagine we will make it there in our lifetime. Most of us do imagine ourselves just a few steps from comfort. “I don’t want to be rich! I just want to be comfortable.” Conveniently forgetting the price of US comfort is depravity in the colonies. We want to forget what that comfort costs. We want to laugh. We want that head empty Kamala laugh! Girl, we want to laugh. We as a whole never wanted liberation because it's uncomfortable. And I would actually respect everybody cheering for Kamala Harris a whole hell of a lot more if you were just willing to admit that outright instead of pretending like we're actually doing something good.

The foolish concede to corruption.

I am reading Mama Ellen’s memoir at the moment and it is rivoting. Most definitely a text I will read twice. If you are not new to Threadings., I have spoken on more than one occasion on how we in the US are slowly gearing up for civil war. Right now, war is enacted in courts and in policymaking in various attacks on healthcare, reproductive rights, rights to education, the gutting of public school systems, the systematic underpaying of teachers, and actually of all care workers. Thinking about the chronic nurse strikes that have cropped up and been left mostly ignored since COVID has continued to decimate our healthcare infrastructure. More and more of our taxes are going to making sure that we keep the US armed to the teeth and not to making sure that life in the US for the working class is bearable in any way. We're watching the slow deterioration of society and (as Dr. CBS pointed out), the increased militarization of everyday happenings.

Conceding to corruption does not keep the peace. It allows for said corruption to continue its abuses.

I am not usually so cynical.

But truly, what the fuck. What the fuck. Remember when I said that every American is addicted to something?

The only perk of being working class in the Western world is our unlimited access to comfort? The comfort of denial continues her reign as the sweetest drug of all. We choose to cast our eyes towards the fiction of a happy ending rather than disrupting the machines that cause all this misery in the first place. It’s been a good couple months of us looking in the eye the costs of imperialism, the price of all this endless comfort, and instead of looking towards the growing rebellions across the colonies— something that should actually bring us comfort and joy, the knowledge that others bite back their regimes— we cast our gaze to these ludicrous what if scenarios. What if we can just push Harris left? What if we call her a war-mongering arbritor of the police state after she’s elected? Won’t she be better than Trump?

I don’t care who the hell is wielding all the blood money. What I want is a child. I want children in this life. And I am not, I simply refuse to tell my kid, “Yes, I did voluntarily cheer on this woman who I knew would happily continue to suck the bone marrow from the colonized world, even while knowing she would do that very thing! The other option embarrassed me.” Because that’s all this is. The other option embarrasses us.

There is no popular president that would create the revolutionary policy and world-making that guarantees our collective safety. Does not exist. The job of the president of the United States is quite literally antithetical to that idea, and any progessively minded one would be working to make the position obsolete. There is no such thing as a good president. I am watching the youth of Kenya rise over and over again to force their federal bodies into caring for them. And they are dying at these protests, literally under live ammunition, going missing, bodies turning up in slums. And here we are raising money for Kamala. Trump doesn’t embarrass me! Y’all do! Those of Myanmar have been fighting a revolutionary war for years that much of the professional class has decided to take active part in rather than fleeing. And our professional class is raising money for Kamala.

EMBARRASSING!

We (in the West, as a whole) do not actually care about freedom, really because most of us cannot imagine what it would be like to be uncomfortable for the rest of our lives. It humbles me that we offer ourselves— we offer our minds— to be sold like this. I have so much revolutionary optimism until I open fuckin twitter."

-Ismatu Gwendolyn on Substack from Harris, Palestine, and the Spectacle of Liberation